I am no liberal thinker when it comes to things like affirmative action etc.

But as a musician reading books and talking to many of the black "old time greats" of the jazz world. I have a different veiw of things.

I truly believe that things would never have gotten so bad in the 1960's with the riots, black panthers and the rise of black islam and all if we had only treated the blacks with a little more respect and dignity.

You've all seen the pictures of the gleaming, clean white bathrooms and a hole in the floor for the "colored" bathrooms. The white drinking fountains of porcelain and chrome and the colored drinking fountain was a hose on the side of the building. Why couldn't they put some seats for blacks to sit at in the lunch counters. If white people did not want to be near them fine, maybe they didn't want to be near us either. The point is most of it was stupid and petty.

If you were a black war vetran who almost got his ass shot off in WW2 and had to drink from a hose outside I wouldn't blame you for being pissed.

The whites especially in the south took this shit way too far.

I don't want this to sound like a "Kumbaya" moment, but if the whites had treated the blacks with a little more respect and really tried for some kind of honest and fair "separate but equal" I don't think you would have had all the terrible problems that came about in the 1960's when the black folks just couldn't take any more bullshit.

Another thing... the pendulum never would have had to swing so far left all the way into the 1980's like it did.

Some common sense, honesty, fair play and just plain decency was all that was needed on the white folks part.

Sal